23

THE NEXT DAY, I STAYED IN BED AND LET THE WOMEN dance the fog away without me. Once it had lifted, I joined them at Rose Manor for preparations for their celebration day, as Mia asked. Every year on September 18 since before the earthquake, a celebration has been held to commemorate Francis Drake’s landing at the Bellinas Lagoon. He must have purchased miles of knots from the witches of England to arrive safely in California. A small parade ambled down Main Street. The festival had been a popular attraction in the whole county, until Manny purchased the properties of the town. The Bohemian Club acted as an unofficial council or board for the good town. Owning pretty much everything, Manny was naturally, implicitly, at the head of the council, and as on the ordinance I’d pointed out to Guy, he discouraged outsiders.

An assortment of modest decorations lay across the redwood dining table when I arrived. Flaccid balloons piled next to crepe-paper streamers, poster board, paintbrushes, glitter. The women, their babies sleeping and strapped to their backs or coiled like cats before the fire, made posters and signs, knotted curled ribbons to balloons, now afloat in the room after a wave of Mia’s hand. The windows and doors were open to the blue sky and distant sounds of waves.

“Arts and crafts for just a few moments longer,” purred Mia, passing me a warm cup of fragrant tea into which I escaped. The weight of the day’s perfection was especially heavy, but the tea did its work. Soon, the scene took on the dreamy quality I’d come to rely on. Over everything lay a sheen of glimmering abalone iridescence. “I wasn’t sure if we’d see you today. There’s so much to do. We’re thrilled for an extra pair of hands.” At that, she led the way outside.

Last in the line of beautiful women dressed in their everyday finery, I followed. Not quite half of us pregnant, but all barefoot. Out the door and through the statues toward another path I had not noticed before. Women do love their secrets. Down the nearest hill, helped by a gentle breeze. I was just like Guy. A follower. Where would last night’s conversation about the movie have gone, had we not been interrupted by the wind? Would I have told him about the baby? Would I be on my way back to New York instead of following these women, whom I could not decide if I wanted to be like? The distance between them and me grew the farther we walked. Not a leaf of poison oak tarnished the trail’s perfect green boundary. No clouds floated past in imagined shapes. No mosquitoes buzzed, and no snakes flicked messages into the air. Following the clear, dustless trail, we reached the top of the small hill closest to Main Street. Just above the schoolhouse, as a matter of fact.

“Do you all really not believe in vaccinations?” I asked, the sound of my voice breaking their soft harmonies. I can say that I hardly ever joined in their singing. We emerged in a clearing as perfectly kept as the front lawn of Rose Manor. Statues danced in unnatural shapes around the edges of the hill, and I could not shake the sensation of dizziness. I hardly noticed the lamb munching at the green grass between thin wires of a portable fence. A tall metal post loomed at one end, but cast no shadow. The light breeze that had carried us uphill ruffled the ears of the lamb. A machete and some other metal tools hung from the post.

“Of course we vaccinate our children,” Mia said. I noticed her pronoun, though she had no children yet. The others seemed to roll their eyes and titter in unison. “Just as with everything, we do what we like, but let the men think they know best.”

“That doesn’t seem very honest.”

“Honesty is more of an illusion than magic. Do men monitor the daily minutiae in parenthood?” she responded with an animated wave, and the women laughed. We’d reached the fence. “You’ll find, Tansy, that it’s us who make and remember the doctors’ appointments, the dental checkups, school schedules. They would not know what goes on, if we didn’t tell them. For example, there’s no need for me to tell them what you did last night. Reckless to display magic.”

I felt a bit shocked at this, but again, what she said made a sort of sense. I found it hard to pay attention to more than the quiet murmur of the animal stepping on the perfect grass.

“Don’t look so worried, Tansy. Everything’s all set up. The messy part is over in the blink of an eye.”

“What about all the people who do believe? If Manny promotes that movie, people could get sick or die,” I managed.

“That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think? Other people can do what they like. Free will and all that. Our children are safe, and people can do what they like with theirs.” She twirled around, as if to say, “That’s that,” and walked through the gate of the pen. The animal seemed not to notice as one by one, the women floated inside. I followed, to my shame, but the effects of the tea were eroded by either my fear for the lamb or fear for myself.

The grass was cool but not cold beneath my bare feet. Soft, never itchy. The climate, as always, was perfect. Mia plucked a long, curved knife from the pole without any sound, and the women, led by Aster, started to sing again. Why is it that cults are always singing? I was counting by then. One. Two. Three. Four. The melody was different from the one on our walk, but still familiar. It was the one I remembered in the cave. The same one they sang at the hot springs. A beautiful and soothing melody that I hope never to hear again.

Suddenly, I saw myself being dragged across the perfect green lawn. I had to look down at my feet to make sure they remained fixed to the ground, and that my heels were not, as I had so clearly seen, parting the blades of grass with their kicking weight. Was I having a vision? What is the difference between imagining the worst and divining the future? Perhaps Manny was not so wrong when he said I had been a prophetess in a past life. It was not Cassandra I thought of, but Circe and her instructions to Odysseus when he is en route to the underworld. But these women of Bellinas brought no milk. No wine or barley as offerings for entry. The animal may not have been a part of any sacrificial schemes. As Mia claimed, its death very well may have been simply a part of their “back-to-the-land” lifestyle. Even though I knew my feet to be planted on the grass, I was shaken. I had somehow let myself become a part of whatever was happening around me. Like I said before, it came on slowly. What’s a bit of dancing and singing? Some dabbling in magic. Seeing Mia with the long knife in her hand, hearing her dismiss my concerns, I could not deny any longer the selfishness of their vision for Bellinas. They were no better than the men.

I could not ignore the joy that lit Mia’s face the moment the knife opened the poor animal’s throat, or the sound that came out, a gurgling shriek—so like the gusts of wind that kept me up all night. What illusions I had about these women who called themselves witches dissipated like the morning fog. I did not want to be a part of their group, no matter the control they kept on their husbands or their freedom or beauty. I did not want to be a member of the Bohemian Club, no matter the wealth and protection it offered. I turned my eyes again onto my feet, a view that did not stop my body from retching. I could not let go of the vision that it was my limp body being dragged across the grass by two slender women who certainly did not look strong enough to lift a lamb. I blinked away the image of myself hanging from the pole, and there was the poor animal. Its front legs hung from the prongs at each end of the tall metal pole, and its head lolled over the open gash.

Where was all the blood? I knew little about lambs, and nothing about how to slaughter an animal, but I knew that much. There should have been so much more. As I diverted my gaze back to the ground, I noticed a trickle of red, so dark it looked black, seeping between the blades of grass, crawling slowly toward me only to disappear before reaching my toes. One. Two. Three. Four. I was very dizzy, retching into every refreshing breeze. There was not a drop of blood on the dresses of Iris and Lily, the two who lifted the animal with so little effort. They did not skip a beat in their singing during the whole ordeal. On Mia’s hands, there were only the usual rings of gold and coils of jewelry.

“It’s just like I said, isn’t it, Tansy?” asked Aster. “Mia has such a soothing way with them at the end. She knows exactly what to say.”

Mia smiled at the compliment, but remained quiet.

“Is it part of the magic you do? Animal sacrifice.” I must have sounded accusing. I suppose I was.

“Only in that we can make it more comfortable for the animal. They don’t suffer at all.”

I had seen the animal’s eyes. I heard the bleats underneath their singing and between the pounding beats of my heart. How was it possible that not a drop of blood stained their expensive silks? That the smell of death was not greater than the perfume of jasmine and amber in the air? I was still feeling nauseous as the women walked the trail toward the house again. I had to stop more than once to catch my breath. The trees kindly offered their limbs, which I took to steady myself.

“Are you all right?” Aster turned around to ask.

“I just need to walk, I think. You go ahead. I want to walk down to the ocean.”

Turning back toward town, I left them. Had the repairing of my relationship really been an act of magic? I could not decide. I did not want any part of a magic that needed death to work. If I had to choose between honesty and magic, I would lean toward the former in spite of Guy’s seeming happiness. My happiness was the illusion. I had wanted friends with whom I frolicked and confided, but they seemed to care little about anything but their community. And their secret coven within that community. Mia told me that she had nothing to do with the disappearance of the others, the couple who lived in the house before us. Why hadn’t they fit in? How were they not right? Had the winds driven them mad? Maybe they did not die diving for abalone, but fell from the cliffs like so many before them.

A block from the water, I stopped at the community bulletin board next to the general store and sighed over the conspiracy theories and New Age misogyny. As with Guy, I’d been ignoring what I didn’t like for the sake of tolerance and wishful thinking. No longer. There was a new poster advertising the anti-vaccine movie. A public screening at the former library was scheduled, apparently. Inhaling slowly and setting my shoulders back, lest I look crazed or upset, I reached out and snatched the flyer off the board. The sound of its initial tear and subsequent crumpling in my fist before I threw it into the compost bin was only slightly less satisfying than the look of fear on the general store clerk who happened to be walking past me at the time. Wyatt’s father, the old man whom I’d seen begging Manny for help one Sunday. The informer. If my outburst inspired him to stock some chocolate or coffee, then it would be worth it.

I felt vindicated after my small act of vandalism and decided to climb the trail back up the Mesa and down the road to Rose Lane. My stomach had settled. I would not be able to hide the pregnancy much longer if nausea became a regular thing. My breasts were more sore and swollen every day. All the sunlight . . . I felt like I was forgetting something, but the sensation was different from focusing the blurry images and half-remembered touches of the hot springs. No, it wasn’t like recalling in the cave. There was a word I wanted. That I tried and tried, and could not produce. No wonder, for in the dusk, the winds were beginning to pick up. I noticed a flyer stapled to a tree: “Outsiders not welcome! Residents only! Rentals will be fined!” Maybe I was the worst one of all of them. Taking the comforts their wealth provided, while judging their beliefs or practices or whatever.

The window of the schoolhouse is filled with dusk on my third day here. Exactly half-pink and half-blue. I must hurry. The equinox must be imminent, and with it will come Mia and the witches and winds of Bellinas. Anna Nováková writes that a sky of two colors brings a confrontation. I knew it would come eventually, but here is a sign that my time is running out. Bellinas grows less safe by the minute.